Leisure Activities after TBI Have Changed

Leisure Activities after TBI: Part Twenty-One

Leisure Activities after TBI have changed for Quinn. He was at one time a hockey player and then a hockey referee. He does not believe that he will skate again but he does want to ski as one of his Leisure Activities after TBI.

Do you use the computer as one of your Leisure Activities after TBI? What do you use the computer for? 

Look up real estate, you know, email.  Not much, I mean.

Do you chat often on the computer as one of your leisure activities after TBI?

No, I mean, I have a Facebook account, but it’s, I mean, some people are addicted to it. I don’t care when somebody else has to go to the bathroom.  Don’t, don’t tell me whatever. I don’t care that you had a chicken sandwich at lunch.   So I just look at Facebook once in a while and that’s about it.

I have been probing about sport memory with many of our participants, to see to the degree they are forming and retaining new memories after brain injury, particularly in areas of high premorbid interest. As Quinn was so interested in  hockey before I got hurt, I wanted to see how clearly he had remembered the previous season, which ended a little over a year after his severe brain injury.

Are you interested in sports as one of your leisure activities after TBI? 

Yes, my greatest goal is to go skiing again.  If I can’t skate again I’m okay with that.  My friends aren’t.  But I’m okay if I am told I can never play hockey again.  I just want to  ski.

Watching Hockey as One of Quinn’s Leisure Activities after TBI

You’re wearing a Red Sox jersey and you say you’re from Boston, and there was a fairly significant event that happened in hockey,  related to the Boston team recently. 

If I bet on the finals I would’ve lost.  I would’ve never believed the Bruins would’ve done it, and the Bruins did win the Stanley cup, and I was happily surprised.

You’re a Bruins fan? 

I was not.  I gave up on them back a long time ago, and when they got into the finals and lost four games straight again.

Was that in the early the ’70s? 

No, that was in the ’80s and again in the ’90s, so in the ’90s I said I was  done with the Bruins.  Now I had season tickets with the Panthers for a few years, and I just enjoy seeing a good game.  I don’t care who it is.  I’m ecstatic that the Bruins won.

Where are the Panthers? 

Panthers are in, you mentioned it, Sunrise, Florida is where they play. Yeah, so the Bruins come down here sometimes and play.

What do you remember of the Stanley Cup?  You watch it? 

Yeah, I watched all of it.

What was the defining aspect, why did they win? 

Because they have the best goalie in the world today, and I think somebody paid off the twins not to play hard on Vancouver.

Talk to me about goal tending, in general in that series.

It’s, it’s an unbelievable story.  I mean, Tim Thomas didn’t play in the NHL until just a couple years ago.

How old is he now? 

He’s in his late 30s, and I want to say he’s 37 I think, and he was, he was brought in as a backup goalie, became the star because  of an injury to another goalie, had an unbelievable year.  The next year he didn’t have as good of a year.  He was kind of back, in the backup role again, and then this year his, his roller coaster ride, he became the No. 1 goalie again.

Then in the playoffs he was… I mean, the games that they lost to Vancouver, 1-nothing; 3 to 2 in overtime. The third game I think was 2 to 1, and then the games that they won, he had a shutout I think three out of the four wins.  They scored, I don’t know, 18 goals against them, in the games that they won; 18, 19, whatever it was.  I mean, and it was like their goalie wasn’t even in net.

Their goalie had a good series for three games though?

Yeah.

Tell me about that. 

The Bruins couldn’t shoot the puck on net.  I could’ve played goalie, with my injury.  I could’ve put a traffic cone in the net.  I mean, if you don’t shoot you don’t score, and I think that was a big problem with those games, why they didn’t have a good outcome.

I discovered how vivid memories of sports were in my male participants, with our earliest interviews.  Those interviews were done primarily of Packer fans during the Packers’ Super Bowl season of a year ago.  (I too am a Packer fan.)

I started to see some hope in that island of vivid memories when I interviewed a Bear fan, Kevin, whose memory was markedly poor for everything but sports.  See http://tbivoices.com/kevin7.php  I coined in that story a term, a concept for cognitive therapy called “spectating based cognitive therapy” in that story: http://tbivoices.com/kevin8.php  I said there:

While this promising concept of using sports spectating, as one of leisure activities after TBI, would likely only work with someone like Kevin who had a “fans” interest in his teams prior to injury, the concept of SBCT with those who aren’t sports fans, if they had areas of interest in other types of spectating. The key to the reading research is “high interest” in leisure activities after TBI.

While the difference between Quinn’s general memory and his “spectating” memory was not as marked as Kevin’s, it is clear that such technique would probably offer great options for Quinn as well.  If nothing else, it would keep him cognitively challenged while he tries to find something economically productive he can do.

Next in Twenty Two  –  Appreciation for His Wife Enhanced After Severe TBI

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

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